You know the good times are truly over only when champagne’s taken out of the Office for National Statistics’ inflation-measuring shopping basket.

OK, so we’ve been through more than five years of financial strife, but the striking off of fizzy Chardonnay from the statisticians’ list of things it uses to measure the cost of living shows just how bad things have got.

Obviously, if you’re in government, the first thing you do when you hear such cataclysmic news is scrap the plans for a minimum price on alcohol – you know, that flagship policy you’d talked about to tackle Britain’s binge drinking epidemic.

At least, that’s my assessment – the two things cannot be unconnected, can they? Protect France’s bubbly business by holding off on that minimum pricing wheeze you thought up when you were thinking of ways of stopping the masses getting legless on a Friday night.

Of course, the story (and speculation) about the end of the alcohol tax has won itself more column inches this week than the more-complicated-to-explain bedroom tax (or spare room levy, or empty house space tariff – or whatever it’s officially called).

And it illustrates that the coalition’s welfare reforms are more about anti-benefits ideology and less about saving the Exchequer money.

The chaos surrounding the policy is exposing something that ministers cannot hide – no matter how hard they try: the bedroom tax is in dangerous disarray and it threatens heartbreaking implications for the people it affects.

One of the greatest legacies of the 20th centuries social reformers was the idea that the state was there for people from cradle to grave, that it would look after everyone without discrimination, that there is a safety net just in case things get bad no matter who you are.

The demonising of benefits claimants has helped ease the passage of punitive measures through. The undermining of the civilising force that is the welfare state is apparently unstoppable.

And while there are protests planned around the country before the bedroom tax comes in next month, it looks like nothing will sway the government from its course – 11th-hour concessions on foster carers and armed forces families notwithstanding.

Yes, it’s easier to look daft when you do an about-turn on the minimum cost of a flagon of cheap cider because of backbench pressure, than admitting you should take a flagship new welfare policy back to the drawing board because it’s going to devastate the lives of thousands of families, pensioners, disabled people around the country.

Scrap the bedroom tax? Now there’s a proper reason to start popping the champagne corks – it’s certainly one way to get it back in that inflation basket.